And we will never be ready, because spending even a penny on superstorm preparedness (or for that matter, any government program specifically designed to help non-billionaires, such as education or highway maintenance) is ZOMGSOSHELIZM!!!1!

Actually... our infrastructure really sucks. It isn't sexy as a politician these days to ask for money for desperately needed repairs... just push the problem on to the next guy, you'll be out of office in a few short years anyway.

Kartrina wasn't really that bad of a storm. It was the lack of properly shoring up the levies that caused them to break and flood the whole place.

Anyway... One thing this guy points out is true. Wind is bad, but water is FAR more destructive. ou don't realize what kind of bulk it can exert without physically trying to fight a current yourself. One day I was tubing down the Deleware, and the water looked so peaceful. So I jumped out of the tube and stood up. WOW! That water was WAY more powerful than I expected.

Imagine what a Tsunami would feel like. Go look at some of those videos from Japan. Like, holy mackeral, Batman!!

StreetlightInTheGhetto:Actually... our infrastructure really sucks. It isn't sexy as a politician these days to ask for money for desperately needed repairs... just push the problem on to the next guy, you'll be out of office in a few short years anyway.

Our Infrastructure does not "suck". Is it over-leveraged in parts? Yes. Could it be improved? Undoubtedly. If the nitty needles get everything they want, will absolutely everything be available for quintiple nines? NO farkING WAY.

shiat happens. shiat happens all of the time. If we live our lives depending on the "grid" to provide absolutely everything we need all of the farking time in every farking way we can imagine we are deluding ourselves.

If your business will be out of business after a week, you don't have a business. If you can't handle 24 hours without power, you are a farking moron. If you live in a place that is regularly wiped off the map by weather, well, the weather was there first.

Why is New York suck a BFD? Because it's a geologically and climatologically stable place. Thus why we put a civilization there, and have had a civilization there for hundreds of years. And even in the midst of that "chaos", few people died. Go look at the fire bombings of WWII and get back to me about your definition of disaster.

King Something: "And we will never be ready, because spending even a penny on superstorm preparedness (or for that matter, any government program specifically designed to help non-billionaires, such as education or highway maintenance) is ZOMGSOSHELIZM!!!1!"

This.Regardless of whether it's anthropogenic or not, shiat's *happening*.And sea walls and marshes and surge barriers are way cheaper than what we're about to shell out for Sandy.

And we're never going to be "ready" either. "Ready" implies not building massive cities full of potential victims right along hurricane- impacted shorelines, that will regularly have to be rebuilt on the backs of the taxpayers. "Readiness" means taking all this money we're throwing around to help the Dems and the Repubs buy votes, and using it to upgrade the infrastructure. (You know, what the government is actually supposed to do.)

durbnpoisn:Kartrina wasn't really that bad of a storm. It was the lack of properly shoring up the levies that caused them to break and flood the whole place.

Anyway... One thing this guy points out is true. Wind is bad, but water is FAR more destructive. ou don't realize what kind of bulk it can exert without physically trying to fight a current yourself. One day I was tubing down the Deleware, and the water looked so peaceful. So I jumped out of the tube and stood up. WOW! That water was WAY more powerful than I expected.

Imagine what a Tsunami would feel like. Go look at some of those videos from Japan. Like, holy mackeral, Batman!!

Katrina was a really bad storm. Yeah, New Orleans got the flood damage, but my hometown of Biloxi was intensely wind damaged, too. Katrina wiped Ocean Springs, MS off the map for a minute.

But yeah, I would never want to fark with a tsunami. That's serious destruction.

fredbox:Smeggy Smurf: Bullshiat. Alaska gets "superstorms" all the time. The Aleutian chain in particular gets hit several times each winter with storms strong enough to be hurricanes.

STORMS TO NOWHERE!! CUT ALL DISASTER RELIEF SPENDING!! The new government policy is "drown-in-place".

To nowhere, and to no one. Alaska's population density is 1.264 people per square mile, but half of them live in the Anchorage metro area, so for the rest of the state, you're looking at 0.6-0.7 people per square mile. This is a slightly higher population density than, say, Jupiter, which also has some gigantic storms that nobody worries much about.